


Always Remeber Us This Way.

by Carrie85



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22351420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carrie85/pseuds/Carrie85
Summary: “I´m not going back to Enterprise.”“Captain?” Spock found his voice as first again.„I can´t, it´s impossible.“
Relationships: Christopher Pike/Cathrin Zimmer OC
Kudos: 9





	Always Remeber Us This Way.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes there is need for a sad story, so you warned! 
> 
> This belongs to my OC story, but it could be read without knowing of it.  
> If you want to know more about my OC Cathrin read my going-on-story: Where no one has gone before (Link at the end of this story).

A hectic remark than the shuttle bay exploded in red warning lights and panic screams.

“Everybody out here!”

The damaged shuttle crashed to the ground, teared everything in its way with it. 

_God, which one aloud this hothead to fly!?_

Behind her she heard someone stumble and felt to the ground.

“Oh no no no!” Cathrin jumped to the Ensign. “Leave it here! Get out!”

She grabbed her arm, pulled it and the young woman slides over the floor to the door. Right in front of her the shuttle stroked against some heavy cargo boxes and transformed them into bullets. Deadly and fast.

To fast.

„Pike!“

She didin´t saw the box coming. She just felt how it hits her, teared her off her feet and slammed her into the wall behind her.

Cathrin heard a scream but it was not hers. She just felt how the weight of the cargo pressed the life out of her crushed body.

“Oh please no.” She felt a hand grabs hers that was free and still intact. “There is help on its way, don´t.” Una sobbed lightly, than raised her voice. „Someone needs to call the Captain!“

„I…“  
„Don´t speak, save your power.“

Slowly Cathrin blinked at her friend, unable to say something comforting, then she knew were this goes. She was already dead, nothing here could save her. Every sound became duller, the pictures before her eyes vanished, her body gets number with every breath she managed to take.

Right before everything turned to silver glass she saw him. Chris stormed into the hanger, his eyes wide, heavy breathing. She breathed in, opened her moth as he replaced Una, grabbing her hand but it was too late.

As Chris fingers touched her, he could felt how her breath left her. There was a short glimmer in her eyes, as she saw him, a glimpse that she recognized him, but it disappeared in the blink of an eye and took her with it.  
She didn´t saw anymore how Chris collapsed, felt to the ground, right into Spocks arms and she didn´t heard him scream. This heartbreaking, painful and desperately scream that took every noise from the hangar before it took the heart of the USS Enterprise.

++++

Pink roses. There were all around this place. From a pale tone all the way to a dark, rich tone. Like her lips, when he kissed her too much. It seemed like everyone brought some for her, except him.

In his hand he holds a single white calla lily. Like the one that was her bridal flowers, the one she planted at their house in Mojave, like the one that always makes her smile.

He heard steps behind him. He didn´t need to turn around too knew to whom they belong. There were always behind him these days. And he was thankful for that and it would come the time were he could say thank you for that, but not today.

“Chris.” It was strange for Spock to address him like that, but the Captain had asked for and he had consented it. Pike stood still there where he had left him. He heard him breath heavily, maybe he cried again, even if Spock wondered how he still had left tears to cry.

“I´m sorry, but it´s about time.”

“Yes.” His voice was rough, broken. “I know.”

A few steps away Spock stopped. The coffin was still open. Until an hour ago her friends had said goodbye, then Chris requested everyone to leave, since then he stood there. Now he moved infinitely slowly. His hand trembled as he turned to face her.

“She looks, like she´s sleeping.” A tear rolled down his cheek, gets lost in all the ones he cried before. “How could it be, that she is dead?” Chris looked briefly at Spock. He knew that this was not a question for which Pike expected an answer and he had none.

Carefully Chris strokes away a strand of hair, that strand that never stayed in that place she wished for. A small red line on her temple was all that could be seen from her injures. Her uniform covered her smashed body. Chris fingers glided over her cheek, he wanted to remember every detail till forever. He grabbed out for her hand, closed his fingers around them and hold them.

How many times had those hands held him up, guided him, saved him, and now? It was missing, he felt like he was falling into infinity.

He stroked her wedding ring, than he pulled it gently from her finger. At least he wanted to keep it.

Then he leaned over her and kissed her lips before he put his forehead on hers.

“I love you, Cathrin.” His words vanished in his faint sobbing. „You saved me, so many times.” Chris wanted to say so much, but he couldn´t, he didn´t manage to express his feelings, the mourning overlaying everything.

Spock’s firm grip on his shoulder scared him to death, but he was grateful he was here. He reached for this hand and hold on tight, then straightened up and realized that not only Spock was with him. Just a few steps away stood Una. Her eyes tear-stained and tired.

“Everyone would understand if you can´t be there.” She approached toward him. “This here is for Starfleet not for her.” She raised her hand to dry some tears on his cheek. “Not for both of you.”

“I´m coming.” He put his thumb and forefinger to his eyes, took a deep breath, then Chris took one last look back to her. He did not need words, she could not hear them anymore.  
  
“Not like this Chris.” Una laid one arm around him, pulled him away. “That should not be the way you remember her.”

She was right. He didn´t want to remember her like that. Chris want to remember the beautiful things of her life.

The first time he saw her in her blue Discovery uniform, so unsure because she didn’t knew, what it means to wear one.

As she stood before him in her light blue Enterprise Uniform, the feeling in his heart, that she never left him, even if they don´t were together at those time.

That Moment he found her on the seashore, wearing those staggeringly ball gown, her gaze into the stars, not knowing that he watched her and that look in her eyes as she gazed back over her shoulder to smile at him.

As she told him, she would stay with him, although there was a way back into her reality.

Her smile as he asked her to marry him.

The slight trembling of her hand as she put hers in his to become his wife.

How proud she was on the day as she took her Hippocratic Oath.

Seeing her the first time as Commander, emerge from the command chair of the Enterprise after having the conn in his absence.

How she whispered his name when they slept together.

Her scent, her smile, her sense of humor. She so perfectly in his arms when she danced to their song.

Always remember us this way.

Yes, that was the way he will remember her and at some point he would be able to smile again if he thought about it, even if that day was not today.

Today he had to let her go, need to watch how Starfleet said goodbye to her, hopping that something carried him through this ceremony as it was expected from him. As Cathrin had expected it from him and so he turned around, grabbed Unas hand, grateful for that hold and walked away.

“Spock?” The Commander looked at him, he nodded, than he looked at Cathrin one last time. “Farewell my friend, I will never forget, what you have done for me.”

Then he unlocked Una and escorted Captain Pike outside and somehow they all made it through this mourning ceremony, heard the loving and emotional words, comforted friends and comrades, prepared her a worthy farewell. And as soon the protocol allows it, they managed to get Christopher away from all that.

He didn´t knew how many hands he had shaken, how often he had heard condolences and well-meaning words. Chris appreciated it but he was tired of hearing them, exhausted from his sorrow and this day. He only knew one thing clearly and now he must tell it to this two wonderful people.

“I´m not going back to Enterprise.”

“Captain?” Spock found his voice as first again.

„I can´t, it´s impossible.“

What could they said? Of course they understood it and yet it broke their hearts at all. He loosed more than just the love of his life on this day and everything on board would remind him of her. There was no place, no corner, no deck that wasn´t part of their story.

And so Captain Christopher Pike left the USS Enterprise and on a peaceful afternoon on his ranch he handed over the command to Captain James T. Kirk. Just the two Captains, a few warm words and the hope that there where brighter days to come.

“For you.” Chris handed Jim a leather bounded notebook.

“What´s that?” The young captain closed his hand around it.

“Cathrin left it to you.” He gazed towards the sinking sun.

“Ehm.” Kirk was unsure about that gift.

“It’s a book Jim.”

“I know what it is but why me?” Carefully he opened it up.

“These are her legacy, everything she brought with her from her reality.” He raised his hand to interrupted Kirk. “It´s for you, you and your first officer, no one else.”

“Only Spock and I?” Kirk softly shocked his head. “Are you sure you will gave it away?”

“I am.” Pike smiled lightly. He was able to do that a little bit more again, than he got serious again. “So she left?”

“Yes.” Kirk nodded. “She never get over it. I guess she goes back to her home world, her husband collected her things form her quarter a few day ago.”

“How´s Spock?”

“At least, from the point that I have, he´s doing fine.” Kirk gazed on the flowers that growing around the stairs. “He had one of them in his quarters.”

“You learn to know him better.” Pike shortly placed a hand on Kirks shoulder. “It took its time but anyway.” He brought on a little smile. “Thanks for coming here.”

“It was an honor, Sir.”

“Chris.”

Kirk nodded than turned to go but hold himself back al last time.

“Are you really sure Chris?” Kirk couldn´t believe it as he received the replacement order a few days ago. Him, the Captain of the Enterprise? How could he fill out such great footsteps? He saw the gaze of the man before him gets lost into the sinking sun.

“Her heartbeat drives me on and now.” Chris tired eyes turned towards him. “There is a long story behind this, that I couldn´t tell you.”

Jim understood. There was something around Chris and Cathrin everyone could feel but no one ever gets behind it.

“The Enterprise was once my home, our home, it is still, but not for me.”

“I will take good care of her.”

“Of that I´m sure.”

That was there goodbye. Kirk never expected to see him again, at least not in this way he did finally. He carried this hour in his heart forever, back on Enterprise he closed away the notebook, it would take years if he started to read in it.

Chris was not surprised by the offer that was carried towards him a few weeks later. A vacation replacement for an old friend. Just babysit some cadets on a J-class vessel. An easy training flight. No away missions, no plans of unexpected things.

And so he walked on through the engine room that day knowing what was the next thing that comes. The inescapable, the fate he sealed so long ago, right in front of him. He always wondered what´s him finally made to go back into this hell of gamma rays and fire to save the cadets. On this morning as he opened his eyes he instantly knew it.

It was Cathrin, it was always her. More than Starfleet she was his drive, his guiding light, her love had made him go through the most terrible things and even she was gone, she was still in his heart, mind and soul and so he could do this.

Could carried the wounded girl out of the flames, catches the burned boy as he felt from the gallery and accepted his fate as the heavy doors shut down before him, cut him away from the students screaming at him, trying to save him, hopelessly.

The year past that day vanished in pain and sorrow. Every day like the day before, on and on as an unending time loop, till that rainy morning the door opened and two old friends entered his room.

It took Spock month to collect everything he needed, to write down all that he know about Cathrin, to get the letters, pictures and memories of all her friends but he did it and he did it well. Chris memories are the last piece to this puzzle.

After a rollercoaster ride he found himself laying on a blanked under a cherry tree, a softly breeze around him and a well-known and long missed touch in his hair. Chris was afraid to open up his eyes, scared that it was just a dream, like hundreds and thousands nights before but he pulled himself together and moved his hand to reach for the fingers in his hair.

Gently he touched it, they didn’t vanished, instead they closed around his and seconds later he felt a soft kiss on his fingertips. His nerves exploded, finally in a way that didn´t hurt him and then he heard that voice he missed so badly.

“Wake up sleepyhead.”

“I can´t.” He felt a single tear running down his check.

“Why?”

“What if I open my eyes and you´re gone.” He breathed in. “Left me again.”

“I never left you.” A slightly giggle go with these words. “Or will.”

And then she whispered those words, she once sung for him.

“The part of me that´s you would never die.”  
  


“Cathrin.”

Then he opened his eyes. And there she was, like she never was away. That warm, loving look in her eyes, a lightly smile on her lips, her hair moved slowly in the wind.

“This is an illusion.” It must, Kirk and Spock brought him to Talos. But it felt so real, she felt so real and after those years of pain, sorrow and loneliness he was ready to get involved, to abandon himself to this world they created from him. And with no hesitation he leaned towards her, pulled her in his arm and kissed her, as his life depended on these single kiss. She broke off the kiss, smiling at him, tears in her beautiful green eyes as he gazed into his blue ones.

“You miss me?”

“You can´t imagine how much.” His fingers running through her hair, over her neck, along her collarbone. “I lost you and its hurts so much.” He felt how it broke out of him. With her fingers he catches the tears on his face. God, how he missed her touch.

“I´m so sorry for…”

He placed her fingers on her lips, she stopped talking.

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

Again they merged in an affectional kiss, mixed up with tears and Chris hold her so firmly in his arms that he could felt the unusual effort in his muscle but he didn´t care, everything he cares in this moment was her in his arms and from know on it would never be different again.

And so, even if it was an illusion, they live her life together on Talos, far away from Starfleet and everything that could separate them. But Chris body was still damaged, it was not possible to heal him anyway, like hers so long ago.

Cathrin holds his hand, whispering to him and lays beside him as he closed his eyes forever and passed away on a cloudy day on Talos.

And with his last breath, they both fade away, together, right into the stars, forever…

Here the link to Cathrins Story:

[Where no one has gone before ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20850080/chapters/49562660)


End file.
